Business process modeling
The action of describing processes of an organisation, as part of business process management and systems engineering, is referred to as business process modelling, or BPM for short. This is done so that existing business processes may be evaluated, enhanced, and automated. BPM is often carried out by business analysts, who have competence in the modelling discipline; by subject matter experts, who have in-depth understanding of the processes that are being modelled; or, more frequently, by a team consisting both business analysts and subject matter experts. Alternatively, utilising process mining techniques, the process model may be constructed directly from the logs of occurrences.
The goal of most businesses is to either enhance the speed of their processes or decrease the amount of time it takes for them to complete a cycle. Other goals include improving quality or cutting costs in areas such as labour, materials, scrap, or capital. In the real world, the need of documenting requirements for an information technology project often serves as the impetus behind a management decision to make an investment in business process modelling.
Putting any newly enhanced business processes into action often requires the involvement of change management programmes. The idea of business process management (BPM) models being fully executable (and capable of simulations and round-trip engineering) is becoming closer and closer to becoming a reality as breakthroughs are made in software architecture.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, several methods have been developed to model business processes. Some examples of these methodologies include the flow chart, functional flow block diagram, control flow diagram, Gantt chart, PERT diagram, and IDEF. Around the year 1899, the first Gantt charts appeared, followed by flow charts in the 1920s, PERT and functional flow block diagrams in the 1950s, and data flow diagrams and IDEF in the 1970s. The Unified Modeling Language and the Business Process Model and Notation are two examples of current approaches to modelling. Despite this, these strategies only make up a small portion of the many approaches that have been used throughout the years to record corporate processes. In the subject of systems engineering, the phrase "business process modelling" was first used in the 1960s by S. Williams in his 1967 work titled "Business Process Modeling Improves Administrative Control." This study was published in 1967. His reasoning was that the methods that are used to get a better knowledge of the physical control systems might be used in a similar manner to the procedures that are employed in businesses. The '90s were the decade in which the word first started to gain widespread use.
During the 1990s, the concept of "process" emerged as the dominant model for assessing productivity. Companies were urged to shift their thinking away from functions and towards processes rather than procedures. The concept of process thinking examines the sequence of activities that take place inside a corporation, beginning with the procurement of goods and continuing through the retrieval of orders and the completion of sales. The conventional modelling tools were created to depict time and cost, but the new modelling tools concentrate on actions that cut over functional boundaries. Because of the rise in both complexity and reliance, the number of and emphasis placed on these cross-functional activities has greatly expanded in recent years. These new techniques, which all "strive to improve processes across the conventional activities that compose a corporation," include business process redesign, business process innovation, business process management, and integrated business planning, among others.
The phrase "business process modelling" is used in the area of software engineering as an alternative to the more prevalent "software process modelling." This is done with the intention of concentrating more on the state of the practise throughout the process of software development. During this time period (the early 1990s), all modelling tools, both those already in use and those that had not yet been developed, that were used to represent business processes were combined as "business process modelling languages." Within the context of the Object-Oriented methodology, this stage was seen as one of the most important steps in the process of specifying business application systems. The modelling of business processes eventually created the foundation for new research approaches, such as those that enabled data collecting and flow analysis, as well as process flow diagrams and reporting facilities. Around the year 1995, the first graphically oriented modelling and implementation tools for business processes were made available. These tools were offered.